Welcome to Week CXXXVII of ‘Fishing Parkland Shorelines’. Like most of us I am a novice fisherman, loving to fish, but far from an expert. In the following weeks I’ll attempt to give those anglers who love to fish but just don’t have access to a boat, a look at some of the options in the Yorkton area where you can fish from shore, and hopefully catch some fish.
By the look of the tattered old calendar on the wall, the one with the owls not fish since the better half holds sway regarding home décor, another year is about to pass into history.
That is normally a cue for writers of such things as a weekly column on all things fishing, to lay out a few New Year’s resolutions to attempt in the year ahead.
But, if 2014 has done anything, it has taught me that plans regarding fishing often get shelved in the face of things which take a higher priority than trying to hook a walleye for supper, especially when there are already wieners and chicken in the fridge freezer. It’s not a case of fishing for subsistence, and thank goodness to that or I would have gone hungry on a number of occasions over the years, those days when the fish stringer was never taken from the tackle box in the absence of a single fish being landed.
I do suppose my waistline might have benefited from a few missed meals at times, but that as they say, is another story, and one I just am not all that interested in writing for obvious reasons.
That all said, the past year did offer a couple of major road blocks to getting out fishing at times.
The first was the Yorkton Terriers extended playoff run. Not only did the local Junior ‘A’ franchise play all the way to a Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League title, but they then headed to Dauphin for the Western Canada Cup, an event which actually overlapped preparation for the opening of the fishing season. The Terriers would win the tournament, and I was at their five games in the event over eight days in my role with the paper.
Then there was a whirlwind week of preparation, and then off to Vernon for 11-days with the team as they played in the Royal Bank Cup championship. It was an amazing week, which saw the Terriers mount a late third period comeback to force overtime in the Cup final, winning its first Canadian crown in overtime.
I have been a journalist in Yorkton for a quarter of a century now, and the win was easily the biggest sports story of that time here.
In fact, I have no qualms in saying it would make the top-10 stories, sports, arts, news, in that 25 years. Sure the day two companies announced they would build canola plants here tops the RBC win, as does the announcement of the Parkland College Trades & Technology Centre, and the Western Premiers Meeting only hours after the last Quebec Referendum on separation, but the Terriers are still on the list, and rightly so.
But I digress. The key thing here is that for the better of a month the Terriers trumped fishing, and I would not have changed the RBC experience for a 45-pound pike.
Next, up were the monsoon rains which hit Yorkton at the end of June. Living in a basement apartment I spent days fighting seepage with a shop vac and towels. We sorta won the battle, but lost carpet and were forced to refuge at my son’s place for a couple of weeks and reclamation of the apartment took place.
I assure you I saw enough water through that stretch that heading to a fishing hole to look at more water was about as far from my mind as it could get, so another stretch was lost to the hobby.
At the same time I found the past year reaffirmed for me why we need things like the Terriers and fishing in our lives.
The past year has shown a lot about the ugliness which remains in our work.
There were the killings on Canadian soil of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo and Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent which send shudders through the country as the idea of terrorism came home us.
There was the choking death of Eric Garner in New York, and then unarmed Michael Brown was shot to death in Ferguson, MS, both deaths at the hands of police, the officers involved not even indicted. The two incidents and others in the US have led to protests of concern including here in Canada.
Then we learned of American torture of prisoners in the wake of the 2011 attacks, and the equally sad defence of such action by far too many people.
And there was the Taliban attack on a school in Pakistan where nearly 150 died.
The list of the disturbing realities of our world is sadly much longer, but you get the idea of the ugliness we have seen in just the past year.
While we need to be aware of such events, and vocal in our condemnation of each one, we also need to be able to step away from the morass and take a deep breath so as to hold on to what is good in our world.
The Yorkton Terriers are good for our community in that regard.
So too, is getting out and disc golfing, playing crokinole with a friend, going to an art show, good movie, or of course fishing.
In some ways the latter of the list, and the reason for this column each week, is an ideal way to recharge from the energy draining realities we face each day.
Standing on the water’s edge, the sun warm, pelicans skimming the water’s surface, or a chipmunk scurrying from rock to rock seeking a tasty treat, it has to centre you regarding the beauty around us.
And if, on that same shoreline a hook tossed happens to entice a fish, well it won’t change the headlines about the latest wart to manifest on humankind’s face, but it will help us understand good remains.
I suppose that is something we fisherfolk understand instinctively, but 2014 certainly reaffirmed how important getting away to fish can be.
So with that in mind I look forward to Mother’s Day at Canora Dam, carp fishing with Graeme Mitchell at the old Togo bridge, taking in the Lake of the Prairies ice fishing derby with the gang, finally getting to Last Mountain Lake in the spring, and getting Patrick Thomson out fly fishing pike, and … well if you are a fan of the column you get the idea.
Happy fishing in 2015 everybody.
